VETERANS

  
David Kupfer: Vets used to be honored in this country. When and why did that change?

Edward Tick: Actually veterans in the U.S. have been honored only while they are serving, to keep the patriotic fervor up, but not after a war is over. The World War II veterans’ welcome home is the exception, the only time in U.S. history when vets were thanked and honored and given decent benefits. The typical treatment of veterans, from the American Revolution to the present, has been denial of their pain and refusal of support. Veterans of World War I were not given benefits, and when they protested in the streets of Washington, D.C., some of them were shot. There are two holidays honoring veterans in this country, but we have betrayed their sacred meaning. A lot of veterans are angry that Veterans Day, which was originally called “Armistice Day,” has become an excuse for patriotic displays. We have a parade and shoot off fireworks, which scare the hell out of many veterans. A better way to honor them would be to listen to their stories. We should give them new ways to serve and an honorable place in our communities.

DK: How did you get into this work?

ET: In the mid-1970s I heard a public-service announcement on the radio. The U.S. Veterans Administration [VA] was looking for volunteer therapists to work with returning Vietnam veterans. Though my regional VA did not need me, they passed my name on to Vietnam Veterans of America [VVA]. One veteran who came to me for therapy was an old high-school friend I had last seen on the softball field. He and I had similar backgrounds, but when he walked into my office, the difference between us was obvious. War had turned him into a ravaged shell of a person.

I was so disturbed by the suffering of the veterans I was treating that in December 1980 I wrote an editorial for the local newspaper about how difficult Christmas was for them. Post-traumatic stress disorder had just been added to the diagnostic manual, and the president of the local chapter of the VVA read my editorial and invited me to talk to the veterans about this new diagnosis. I said I wasn’t qualified: I had treated only a handful of veterans. He said, “That makes you a regional expert!” No other doctors or therapists in the area wanted to touch the issue. When I told him I just couldn’t do it, he said nobody had asked him if he wanted to go to Vietnam, he’d been drafted. The moment he said that, I felt called to serve.

I wanted to know more about what my peers’ experience in Vietnam had done to them. I certainly didn’t love war, but I did have a deep love of warriors, and I saw important values in them: self-sacrifice and devotion to each other and to some higher ideal. These are values that we need as a society, but the ends to which they are applied in the military are often horrific. On the other hand, many civilians and people on the Left desire good ends but lack self-sacrifice and discipline. I take my values from both camps.

-- “Like Wandering Ghosts: Edward Tick on how the U.S. fails its returning soldiers,” The Sun, June 2008